Why God Why

So apparently they switched up our instructors and, though I still have the Bane of My Existence for Phys on Tuesday nights, I now have THE WORLD'S WORST INSTRUCTOR EVER for Monday nights (thank god it's only for two hours).

I take that back--the Oscar for World's Worst Instructor Ever still belongs to my late great Ethics instructor (who I believe has since been fired). (Shockingly, she even beat out stiff competition from some of my high school instructors, one of which was 100% Grade-A crazy and would scream at us whenever we walked past the windows because she had a fear that we would fall out. And yet still, my Ethics instructor won by a landslide. That's some grade-a quality shittiness. But anyways...)

Now, I know I bitch a lot about many of my instructors at school, but I will readily admit that even the ones that bring me angst (like the Bane of My Existence, or the bitch I had my second semester whose shared dislike for one another neither of us even attempts to hide anymore) have taught me fairly well. Some better than others, of course. But I've learned (or at least been primed) well in their classes.

But this woman, o woe, peoples. I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt since it's the first week and I have a sneaking suspicion that they hired her last minute and threw her into this class with nary a word or explanation of how/what she should be teaching. But nonetheless--dear god.

I mean, she forgot the fricking syllabus/coursepack on the first day. I can't even tell you how many nightmares I've literally had in the last 8 years or so where I've forgotten to bring the syllabus to class on the first day--even after I was no longer teaching anymore, I *STILL* continued to have nervous nightmares about it. It's sorta like showing up to class and suddenly realizing you have no pants on. And even moreso in our A&P classes because basically the whole course hinges upon the coursepack as it's an outline of everything that we will be going over in class. And yet, she completely forgot to bring it.

The woman also takes about an hour to explain something that should easily take no more than 10 minutes to discuss. And then after doing so, she *REVIEWS* it. And by "reviewing" it, I mean that she literally repeats everything that she just said, just at a faster speed, and slightly less coherently.

She also is one of those people who reads directly out of the book for most of the lecture. And holy mother of god does this irritate me because why the hell should I drive all the way out there if I could sit down at home and teach this shit to myself? At least liven things up a bit. And know what the hell pages the material is on so that your fricking STUDENTS don't have to be the ones telling you every time you harriedly blurt "I can't figure out what page that is on."

And KNOW WHAT YOU'RE FRICKING TALKING ABOUT. This is my final point of contention--every A&P instructor I've had is able to talk about what they are teaching off the top of their heads. They are able to answer questions without looking the answers up. Occasionally one of them might be wrong, but then they correct themselves later.

This woman seems to have NO CLUE WHATSOEVER.

Every informative piece of her lecture has the cliffhanging quality of a really bad detective novel. "And the ligament that connects atlas to the axis is the... *DUH DUH DUH* (dramatic pause as she flips through pages to find the answer) the ATLANTO-AXIAL LIGAMENT!" Another mystery solved by the great Sherlock Holmes.

Pah.

So I'm gonna try to give her the benefit of the doubt. Try try try. But I know it's not just me--after one hour of last night's class, one of the other students told us first thing on break that he was switching to the day class. After only an hour of her lecture.

All I can say is PLEASE DEAR GOD LET IT JUST BE THAT IT'S HER FIRST WEEK OF CLASS, because if the pacing and animatedness she brings to the classroom doesn't improve at least (and if she doesn't stop reading directly out of the book the whole time), I am gonna have a very hard time staying awake and/or not stabbing myself in the eardrum out of boredom.

If nothing else, I guess the past year has made me realize that being a really good instructor isn't as easy as it looks, that it really *DOES* take mad talent to be good at teaching. So think about that a bit, and next time you bump into some instructor or another that really changed your life or whose class you absolutely adored and learned tons from, thank them. And maybe, just maybe, dry hump them a little in appreciation.